A rarest of rare finds would be to see a supercar turned into a cab. Not so in the UK where a huge number of luxury cars have been registered as cabs apparently to ward off congestion tax. You can find Maserati Quattraporte, Maybach 62, Rolls Royce Phantom and many other luxury cars registered as cabs.
Transport For London (TFL) does not have a suitable weapon in its arsenal to deal with this situation. The only weapon, MOT certificate isn’t a hard nut to crack for these luxury cars.
To get a car registered as a cab, it costs £82 for the application and another £27 annually for the license. Now compare this with congestion charge of £8 a day, which is likely to go up to £25 a day soon for cars emitting more than 225g/km of Carbon dioxide. Registering a luxury car as a cab does sound economically sound, especially so when there are nominal checks to ensure the cars are being used for the stated purpose.
Clean Green Cars has also compiled a list of luxury models along with the number of vehicles registered as cabs. It does make an interesting read.
Model - Number of vehicles registered as cabs
Aston Martin DB7 - 1
Bentley (all models) - 31
BMW M5 - 1
BMW X5 - 18
Cadillac Escalade - 1
Jaguar XK - 1
Range Rover - 52
Maserati Quattroporte - 2
Maybach 62 - 3
Rolls Royce Phantom - 8
[Source: CleanGreenCars Via Carscoop]
